Il D'Annunzio of the little one bourgeoisie
The first of a series of articles dedicated to the best-selling authors of the past, from the unification of Italy to the Second World War, begins with Guido da Verona. These portraits were written by Michele Giocondi, historian of culture and scholar of Italian publishing.
Talking about the books that our grandparents read means retracing a significant part of our culture and national identity as well as history. History, as the great Annales school teaches us, is not made up only of important political events, such as wars, peace treaties, governments, political elections, revolutions, dictatorships and so on. But it is also made up of small daily events: what we ate, what we drank, how we dressed, what the houses we lived in were like, and so on.
Among these "little events" an important role is occupied by the readings that people of the time carried out, that is, the books that ordinary people actually read. Not therefore the great titles that have rightfully entered literary histories, not the writers who are studied in school, not the poets who have won the Nobel Prize; but the novelists who filled the booksellers' windows in their day.
Just like in our times so many successful writers fill them, with piles of their novels piled up on the floor, and which, in a few years, no one will remember anymore. But we really want to talk about these: the writers who sold hundreds of thousands of copies, who in their day were all the rage in the best-seller charts, who made the readers of the time dream, who were really ... our grandparents, or since the The reading public was then predominantly female, our … grandmothers. So let's start with Guido da Verona.
Guido … who?
Today the name of Guido da Verona will mean nothing to anyone, except to some increasingly rare survivor of times gone by, or to some sporadic aficionado of his novels, which have recently been republished by lesser publishers.
Yet a hundred years ago this name was very popular, as it was that of the best-known writer of the period: one whose books were literally snapped up, who sold hundreds of thousands of copies by title in an Italy that still had almost 30 percent of illiterates, out of a population of about 40 million inhabitants. Making due proportions one who today would have sold millions of copies with his novels.
Daveronism
And not with just a title or two, as can always happen to a writer who manages to hit the mark with a book, but who then cannot repeat himself with other works, but with about twenty novels. A sign that he had managed to penetrate deeply into the tastes of readers and to create a fashion, precisely "daveronism", as it was then defined. And what fashion, if his most famous novel,Mimì Bluette, flower of my garden, released in 1916, had invaded the country and circulated in thousands of copies even in the trenches of the war and gladdened, so to speak, the life of our soldiers at the front, in the terrible moments of Caporetto. “When the dream was needed, I dictated the dream; the soldiers carried Mimì Bluette in their hearts and in their bayonets”, the narrator himself confessed in 1924.
A success right from the start
Da Verona had begun in 1904 with a novel, We immortalize life, which turned out to be a complete failure, so much so that the author repudiated it, although later, when he became famous, it was reprinted at length. His second attempt came out in 1908, The love that comes back, published by Baldini and Castoldi after much insistence and with the author's participation in the publication costs, as often happens to beginners. The book was an instant success, with over 200.000 copies sold by 1943.
In 1911 it was the turn of She who shouldn't be loved, the other great Da Verona best seller together with Mimi Bluette, with more than 300.000 copies up to 1943. It was the writer's official consecration as the greatest interpreter of the Italian imagination. Other titles followed such as Life begins tomorrow in 1913, The woman who invented love in 1915, The book of my wandering dream and in 1919 Untie the braid Mary Magdalene in 1920, with slightly shorter runs, but still at the absolute top of the market.
D'Annunzio's models
The war and post-war years were his golden age. Each title immediately met the sympathy of the readers, in such an intense way as had never been seen before and as for a long time it would not be repeated. He managed to embody the most intimate and secret passions of Italians and above all of Italian women, in such a way that not even D'Annunzio could do better.
While outclassing D'Annunzio's novels commercially, Da Verona owed a great deal to the writer from Abruzzo. He succeeded, better than anyone else, in transferring D'Annunzio's lifestyle and models into his characters, characterizing them for the benefit of a petty bourgeois audience.
The best sellers of the divine Gabriel, starting with Piacere and by 'Innocent, which were his greatest successes, sold four, five times less than Da Verona's most popular novels. A great French historian and man of letters, professor of comparative literature, Paul Hazard, recognized him well in 1918: "His success must have been greater than all previous ones, including D'Annunzio and Fogazzaro".
Yet if there was a writer to refer to to understand his fortune, it was D'Annunzio himself. From Verona he essentially succeeded in transferring the life models of the Abruzzo novelist to a petty bourgeois audience, which was numerically much, much larger than D'Annunzio's. What could strike the imagination of an early XNUMXth century reader more? An Andrea Sperelli, protagonist of Piacere, busy for pages and pages to prepare an adequate and highly refined atmosphere for the meeting with the old mistress, or the incipit of Mimi Bluette? “She lost her virginity, for the first time, one evening in the month of April, due to one of those accidental cases to which virgins are exposed, who are by nature destined never to be virgins again. He was about eighteen that day; she was beautiful, fresh and loved each other... she loved herself so much that she didn't have enough strength to prevent another from loving her together with her."
In short, D'Annunzio's upper-class, if not aristocratic, models were popularized, and in Da Verona they became more low-key, popular, suited to the dreams of seamstresses and shop assistants. And the author knew this well. Accused of being "the D'Annunzio of typists and manicurists", he boasted of them and dedicated a book to them: Love letter to the seamstresses of Italy, in which he explicitly declared to his detractors, who defined him as a low-level writer and accused him of having no literary value, to say whatever they wanted, anyway he always had someone who bought his books in hundreds of thousands of copies . And not only in Italy, since it was also widely translated abroad.
Low-grade literature?
The protest was not trivial, but re-proposed a theme that is no longer talked about today, drowned by the only value that prevails in publishing, as in other sectors: economic value. But then, and then for a few decades, "militant criticism" also tried to show readers the artistic value of a work. He tried to direct them towards texts and authors of depth, if anything even making some mistakes.
He distinguished what was real literature from what was not, and which was defined in various ways: consumer literature, appendix literature, para-literature and so on. And on this topic, not bad debates and discussions were being made, which led many authors of large circulations to be defined as series B compared to the names of others in series A, who could boast a much more considerable literary lineage.
But now that the only valid criterion seems to be that of the sales that a writer manages to achieve, this debate doesn't even arise anymore, "militant criticism" has been an unknown object for some time now, and many high-sounding names today, starting from that of the acclaimed Camilleri, no one wonders whether they belong to the category of series A or series B writers; whether they belong to the family of D'Annunzio or of Da Verona.
In the mid-300.000s, things began to change for Da Verona. Other names are added, but above all the tastes of the readers change, and he is no longer able to guide them or to best represent them. Circulations of his books begin to decline. We went from 70.000 to 50.000, to 30.000, finally to XNUMX copies per title. As if to say, nothing for someone like him, even if many writers would have put their signature to reach those figures.
The writer continues to lead his lavish life, always elegant and accompanied by beautiful women. He frequents the Hoepli bookshop in Milan, where Cesarino Branduani works, at the time a clerk, later a prince bookseller and author of nostalgic memoirs on that world, even prefaced by Indro Montanelli. And he inquires about how his latest book is going; then he lets his greyhounds roam free, followed by Cesarino, careful that they don't annoy the customers. But tastes have changed and anyone who has interpreted them like no one else for twenty years realizes that the gray area is increasing more and more. So he tries to change genre, to conform to new trends, as can be seen from his latest works. But for someone who has established himself with his own and very personal style, to the point of making it an absolute fashion, it is not easy, nor perhaps possible, to change clichés.
The parody of the Betrothed
At the end of the XNUMXs, however, Da Verona made a comeback again, for a publishing venture that would have made anyone's veins and wrists tremble. He decides to make a parody of Betrothed. This seems impossible from every point of view. Denigrating our greatest novelist is scandalous: Don Abbondio who becomes a financial speculator and sleeps with Perpetua; Lucia who smokes, speaks French and gives herself to everyone except Renzo; the nun of Monza who manifests lesbian tendencies, just to name a few. These were not tolerable things at the time, especially at a time when the regime was trying to re-establish good relations with the Vatican. The director of the Unitas publishing house where the scandalous parody was to come out, a young Valentino Bompiani, even resigned rather than publish the work. But the property has decided that the book should come out, and with the sum that Bompiani receives as a liquidation it opens, with only one employee, a secretary, the microscopic publishing house that will bear his name. And that it will become what we all know.
From Verona he does not hold back and publishes the desecration of Manzoni's masterpiece, which doesn't even go badly, if, despite the work being hindered in every sense by public and religious institutions, it manages to sell a few tens of thousands of copies.
The 1939 revolver shot
However, the golden times are gone forever, and from 1932 Da Verona will no longer publish anything, although his works still continue to be reprinted with good success. But there are other names that now fill the booksellers' windows, from Pitigrilli to Brocchi, from Gotta to D'Ambra, from Corra to Milanesi, just to mention the “serial” authors.
In 1939, in the midst of the anti-Semitic campaign, the one that would have caused countless dramas, starting with that of the publisher Formiggini, to be limited to the publishing sector, news bounced off the literary universe of the time: Guido Da Verona committed suicide. He recently turned 58. Is it only the fault of the anti-Semitic campaign set up by the regime? He who was also Jewish, but who in 1925 had adhered to the "manifesto of fascist intellectuals"? Hard to tell. And can the tragic gesture be blamed only on the decline in sales of his books and the lack of favor with readers?
Legal questions, but which are difficult to answer. We can only say that these elements certainly played a role, as it seems that even his health conditions were not the best, but perhaps the revolver shot with which Da Verona puts an end to his existence remains a gesture that is still cloaked in mystery.
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